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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24461668">Still in the Dark</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit'>Ilthit</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Out in the Light, Still in the Dark [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Community (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternative Perspective, Depression, F/F, Post-Canon, Remix, Sexuality Crisis</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 00:55:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,000</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24461668</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Britta finds herself drifting alone in the empty apartment that used to house three.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Annie Edison/Britta Perry</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Out in the Light, Still in the Dark [2]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1767178</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Trope Bingo: Round Fourteen, femslashficlets</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Still in the Dark</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Perspective flip for my earlier ficlet <i>Out in the Light</i>.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was quiet at the apartment now that there was no-one left there but Britta and her cats. Even with the one cat that liked to yowl in the night, and the other one that liked to dig through the litter box furiously before settling down to pee. There were no <em>people</em> noises, and for the first time in her life Britta found that… not right.</p><p>Living alone was nothing new to her. She's lived alone most of her life. But here were the photographs of Troy and Abed, here of her and Annie, and there was the red couch the others bought her with her parents' money. Somehow everything in the place was about them and not her, or her only as an afterthought, and that made her feel more alone than she had in that barely furnished bedsit she'd stayed in for three months once while trying to be a lifestyle blogger.</p><p>She started keeping the TV on in the background, first because it reminded her of Abed, then because at least its drone made the place seem less quiet. And she moved into Annie's room, because—well, because she should sleep in a bedroom, shouldn't she, now that she technically had two of them. And Abed's was so distinctly, unforgettably the room where she'd slept with Troy, and later the room where Abed had soldiered through his own heartbreak with marathons of weird British TV shows after the school had been engulfed in imaginary lava and everything they'd known had burned down. Metaphorically. That room now stood as a museum to Abed, and as an occasional cat retreat.</p><p>Some nights Britta wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else so badly she'd even considered hooking up with Jeff again, but his place with its fading opulence and gray walls (talk about pathological) didn't make her feel any more at home. All she had left were the streets and the school and the bar.</p><p>She hugged her cats, got a cactus and glued googly eyes on it, started following a new YouTuber, and eventually tried to make bread. She had Frankie video call her about how to make bread that didn't end up a flat pancake spread out over the whole of the tray. Then she got to Shirley, who knew more about bread, but frankly Shirley knew too much about bread, and after fifteen minutes of bread minutiae interspersed with firm good advice she was ready to call it quits.</p><p>And Annie was always busy these days, her tongue spilling names Britta didn't recognize. Annie didn't know how to make anything beyond buttered noodles and challah, anyway.</p><p>Britta was never busy. She got home in the small hours and slept until noon. On some afternoons her feet still found their way to Greendale, though she'd finally dropped out last year. Nobody wanted Britta Perry to be a therapist. She realized that now.</p><p>She diagnosed herself as tipping towards depression. One night Starburns had followed her to the bar and hit on her all through her shift, and she hadn't even had the energy to get mad.</p><p>She'd made herself so many promises about the things she was going to do and be. Nothing ever panned out. Nothing lasted, not even New York. And she'd been so sure about New York.</p><p>She was losing herself. She'd lost herself before in the past, but it was a dangerous thing. You never knew what you would become on the other side.</p><p>Maybe she was finally growing up.</p><p>The word <em>lesbian</em> didn't scare her so much anymore. She asked Frankie point-blank about it one night after drinks at the bar, in the narrow corridor outside the ladies' room. Am I gay? Have I ever really been attracted to a guy? Do I just go for the various ideas they represent to me? I am, after all, a level seven susceptible.</p><p>"I don't know," Frankie had said in that honest, unhelpful way of hers. "That's really up to you to decide."</p><p>But Britta had never been good at deciding anything, so she tried to kiss Frankie to find out, and the night went downhill from there.</p><p>But Annie. Annie still looked at her the way she had when they'd first started hanging out in their first year at Greendale. Sure, they fought, but she always came back to that soft gaze—like there was something in Britta worth caring about. She'd caught that look on Jeff's face too sometimes. Love was weird and jealousy was a death-wish and all she wanted was to fall.</p><p>"I wasn't trying to go through his receipts or anything," she told Annie one night over Skype, from her dark grainy room to Annie's dark grainy office. Annie's hair was perfect despite the hour, a thick luxurious fall that framed her face. Britta had dragged hers back into a messy bun. She wanted to reach through the screen and pull Annie into her arms, but her mouth kept going. "It was on top of the Pizza Hut menu. Three hundred dollars for epilation? Where did he even get that kinda money?"</p><p>"Would you quit throwing shade on Jeff for a minute? I have something I want to tell you."</p><p>Britta didn't want to hear anything more about Annie's fabulous life without her. Without them. "You usually like it when I throw shade. Shade is our thing."</p><p>It was their only thing, now. The only thing they could have, since Annie was going to have a great new life and Britta was still camping out in the remains of her old one.</p><p>"I've got a date."</p><p>And there it was, her heart shattering. Because Annie had still looked at her that way, and she loved Annie, and, oh God, <em>she loved Annie</em>.</p><p>Something lifted off her, and simultaneously a rock dropped to the bottom of her belly, stretching her, stretching the moment from seconds to minutes to months. This was it. Losing herself. Replacing it with something else.</p><p>
  <em>Here we go. </em>
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